


You Don't Have To (Do This Alone.)

by logdate_unknown



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Angst, Blood and Injury, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medical Examination, Morning Sickness, Platonic Cuddling, Pregnancy, The Resisty Resisting Against the Irken Empire (Invader Zim), They make the story sound bad but I promise Zim doesn't die its someone else, Unplanned Pregnancy, i want to tag more but i dont want to spoil things, i will definitely add more tags as i see fit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21583786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/logdate_unknown/pseuds/logdate_unknown
Summary: Zim arrives back on Earth after disappearing for a year and three months, on a trip Dib assumed was to some sort of Irken grocery store. In a way, he hasn't returned alone.(DISCONTINUED.)
Relationships: zim/oc
Comments: 18
Kudos: 36





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everybody!!! New multi-chapter!!! SO excited to be working on this one. I don't want to say too much, as I want things to unfurl very slowly and reveal things chapter after chapter, so all I can say now is I'm super excited and I'm really not sure how long this one is gonna be. Enjoy!!!

Zim was an open book. Well, visually. Dib didn’t wait for the day that the Irken would profess his emotions, loudly and clearly for all to hear, but on his face, the movements of his antennae, it was all very clear what the alien was feeling.

All the signs had been there, the last he’d seen of him. Signs of anxiety, of restlessness. 

As an adult, he didn’t hunt Zim any longer as much as he kept a watchful eye on him. That meant that when Zim disappeared, it gave him very little to do with himself regarding the obsession that had taken over his life for the past twelve years. 

A little over half of his lifetime. God, thinking about it was so depressing. 

But what else could he do? Just let Zim take over the world, like Dib knew he eventually could if he wasn’t there to stop him?

Even if it had been a while. And if Zim had spectacularly lost interest. Even if they were supposed to be allied now. Even if Zim had made himself vulnerable to Dib, and made some of those human 'promises'. Or was gone for good. 

He would never get over how unceremoniously he’d left. 

As he realized he’d been staring at the monitor, scrolling through the various, tiny, nearly undetectable cameras he’d installed throughout Zim’s base for far too long, he quickly got himself up. After the first time Dib had disappeared, he’d learned to take better care of himself to avoid embarrassment. 

Had it really been twelve years since the Florpus? And an entire year since he’d last seen Zim? And he’d hardly gone a day without checking the footage. 

Dib gave a last glance at his monitor, knowing he’d be thinking of it all through lunch hour.

Zim staggered out of his ship, bleary-eyed and weak-kneed. Flying through the dead of space did that to you. In his arms, he carted GIR, whose glass eyes were still closed in sleep. 

With the roof closed over them, the hangar of the old base had gone dark. For a moment, Zim stood there, outside of his ship, cradling GIR closely to him. And he stood for some time, emptiness welling up inside him from where he stood, and spilling out into the twilight of the hangar. 

“Awake, GIR,” he said, after a while. GIR sluggishly rubbed his eyes, grumbling, and with a voice chronically slow, as if it had been injected with all the slowest moments Zim had ever known, greeted the former invader. 

“Morning,” he droned, then said nothing else, and made no attempt to move other than turning his head and staring into space, the blue glow of his eyes almost so dim that it couldn’t be seen in the dark. Zim just sighed, pulling the robot’s head up under his neck, and looking ahead toward the entrance of the house in the attic floor. 

To be there again, in his Urth base, seemed unnatural. It made all of the past year seem as if it hadn’t happened at all. He had always been here- exiled. Not once in love. Not once touched in a kind way. Still an exile. Well, at least that part was true, for the moment. But Zim had accepted it as forever. 

There was some proof that he had gone, that this moment had come after he’d stepped out of a stolen ship and travelled an expedited nine days back through space, here, on this rock once more. But he was too tired to seek it out, now. All he wanted to do was sleep- forever. 

Sullenly, slower than he’d ever moved, he shuffled toward the trap door which would lead him to the couch. Which, by now, was coated in dust. 

As Dib returned, he crossed his office automatically to his desk, flipping through work files without much thought, reaching periodically over to the can of soda he’d brought in. After a while, he clicked over to the tab that had the security footage of Zim’s base open, and nearly spit soda through his nose. 

Zim was there, in the living room, curled up on the couch. He was just a small, yellowish-gray and blue spot on the low quality resolution, halfway hidden by the arm rest. But it was him, without a doubt. GIR was wrapped up in his arms, and the both of them looked as if they were sleeping. 

As soon as he’d gotten over his shock, worry replaced it. The last time Zim had been in the lab, the last time he’d seen him in person, Zim had stated he would be gone for months, on a mission to procure more rations for himself, as he was running low on food stores he could actually eat. Had he been successful? Dib hadn’t actually worried or considered that Zim might have died on the journey. Zim was like a cockroach. Killing him was simply impossible. But Dib hoped he’d gotten the food he’d needed. 

It had been so long. 

He’d seen Zim sleep once or twice, and knew how restless the alien could be even while he was resting. His antennae would twitch, and he’d shift, grumble and murmur angrily. Dib watched, waiting for him to stir, but Zim was sleeping more soundly than he’d ever seen him sleep. For a moment, Dib almost thought that the camera had frozen. 

So it had been just as long for the alien, it seemed. And, though Dib didn’t know it, many lifetimes more exciting than how he’d spent the past year. 

Dib touched his hands together, reviewing the options in his mind. Inviting the insect to the lab would mean that Zim would know Dib had been watching him, and he couldn’t imagine the meltdown that would result from that. Perhaps he could make it seem as if a message he sent was sent months before, and Zim would be reminded to come down to the lab and re-meet all of Dib’s colleagues. Especially Ursula, who had missed Zim the most, arguably more than him. 

For now, he could only watch, desperate to initiate contact, but terrified to prod the little irken, who resembled a sleeping bear at this distance, at this point where it had seemed an eternity since he’d vaguely smiled at Dib and walked out through the back entrance of the lab, one year and three months ago.


	2. Barely Daring (to hope)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks, if you get secondhand nausea at all from seeing/reading about vomit, I do not recommend this chapter! I got a little nauseous while writing it. There might be some more throwing up in future chapters too, so please take heed of that and stay safe!  
> Three asterisks (***) means it's a memory!

***  
“Hey there, hey,” whispered Aim. Zim felt the tears being eased away from his cheeks by the former assassin’s ungloved hands. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll see each other again.”

“You’re lying,” hissed Zim, opening his eyes, and holding the inhale so that he wouldn’t sob. He placed his hands on the back of Aim’s, trying not to dig in his nails too hard. He couldn’t stand that he was crying, even in front of him, when it didn’t matter. 

Aim sighed. The faintness to his expression, the distant violet eyes, told Zim that he was just as distraught in his own way that they had to be apart, now. He bent over his smaller lover, the edges of his mouth tense. 

“I’m not. I’ll find a way to you, someday. Some way. You mean too much to me.” Zim just hummed, glaring weakly at his love, and turning his face towards his palm. 

They stood at the entrance of their late-rulers’ personal ship- the smaller one that was known for their illegal secret outings of the port of the Massive. It had been repurposed to do much of the same for Zim and Aim, and as they had succeeded in their mission, they’d been doing a lot of it. It would take Zim to Earth much quicker than the old Voot would have. 

Zim didn’t know how he would bear flying in it without him. Without the one that he had developed more closeness to than anything, in his entire lifetime. Than anyone. 

GIR was already resting in the double drivers’ seat, his head open and plugged in to the console, staring ahead dimly into space. 

“You must not contact me,” Aim reminded, and punctuated the statement with an apologetic squeeze to Zim’s waist. His hand lingered there tenderly before moving slowly to his lower back, rubbing the small space below his PAK. “Any signal from you in space- they’ll find you. I can’t… think about what will happen if they do. I can’t, Zim.”

Zim’s antennae went forward, almost on their own, and Aim saw the cue, leaning forward himself so that he could crouch and graze his own antennae against them. It was a parting moment of true bliss for the both of them. They made it last as long as a moment could feel. 

Wordlessly, a new torrent of tears flowing from Zim, triggering Aim just by watching, Zim backed carefully into the entrance of the ship. It was a few somber moments, standing parallel to him, holding his breath, until he reached out to press the button that would have the door slide shut. 

***

Zim awoke stiff and aching. He’d been crying in his sleep. Grumbling, he pushed the tears aside, and adjusted GIR in his arms. The metal limbs shifted against him like empty bullet casings- spent and left wherever they’d fallen. 

Outside the dirty window, it was early morning. It looked as if the sun had just risen. Zim couldn’t recall the sky ever looking so blue. Dib’s doing, no doubt. While it was difficult to admit to himself, or to anyone else, his former arch-rival had done his own world a great service. Zim was very glad he hadn’t killed him, early on. 

He didn’t care to find out how long he’d slept, but judging by the way he felt; groggy and slow, it had been far too long. Zim had yet to discover how the base had weathered without him, all this time. 

All this time, as if it hadn’t been the blink of an eye in Zim’s century and a half. It hadn’t felt that way when he was living it- it only did now that it was over. 

Still holding GIR, he sat up, shimmied to the edge of the couch, and shivered as his boots hit the floor. How had he slept through this chill? And his stomach was upset. As he landed, something inside rolled unpleasantly. It wasn’t quite hunger, and it left him dizzy for a moment.

“Computer!” He cried, his voice hoarse with sleep. He was a little nonplussed when he heard no reply. It had been long enough that he would probably have to bring the computer back online manually down in the base. 

The shout woke GIR, who made a sweet, soft sound. Zim turned him so that they faced one another, holding him under his arms, and GIR’s head lolled on the skinny cable of a neck, falling sideways to one shoulder, and then forward, the faint glow of his eyes impossible to see in the morning light. Zim clicked his tongue and brought him forward, holding him like he’d seen human mothers carry their young, letting GIR’s face rest against his shoulder, one hand on his back and the other underneath his behind. 

“We will have to bring the interface back online, GIR,” he said tersely, “and then maybe, as I’d hoped, we’ll be able to power you up somewhere. I theorize that you may have more energy if you remain attached to a consistent source.”

GIR said nothing. Zim didn’t expect him to. 

His jaw set in a hard, stiff line, Zim made his way down into the old reliable sanctum that was his Earth base. 

Dib replayed the footage for the fourth time, running past the fast-moving rewind until he easily reached the spot he’d landed on before. 

A consistent source? For GIR? GIR himself was a consistent source. Of chaotic joy, of undying loyalty, in the recent years that Zim had been kinder to him. Seeing Zim carry him like an infant was disturbing. GIR should have been running around, dancing in his dog onesie, screaming about taquitos. 

What’s more, what was Zim even wearing? It was clearly of Irken style and material, but was such a left turn from the undying pink uniform Dib was so used to him wearing. It resembled Tak’s twin coat-tailed dress far more, with long black sleeves that ended seamlessly in gloves, the two pieces not separated. The shoulder pads were harsh and angular, with deadly points. And it was blue, a deep, royal blue, with intermittent glossy stripes going all the way down. It was so unlike Zim. It was almost like funeral garb in comparison to the usual brightness. But the color went well with the pink of his eyes and the glass of his PAK. 

Dib’s thoughts were steeped in foreboding. This was not what anyone- even if they happened to be alien- did when they came back from the grocery store, which was what Dib had initially assumed Zim was doing when he’d first left. This was like coming home from a war, and it disturbed him deeply to see the both of them acting so… sad. So unmotivated, tired. Just doing things because he had to, not as if everything in his life depended on it, like he’d always acted in the past. 

Zim had slept for three days. Dib had really, truly thought he was dead for a long, horrible moment, and he’d desperately zoomed in on Zim’s still figure to finally see the smallest motion, the shifting of his narrow chest in an inhale. The temptation to drive over to the base, to find out what was wrong, have Ursula examine him, was very strong. 

Having seen enough, Dib shut the briefcase laptop and moved it aside on the covers of his bed. He still had to get ready for work. The past few mornings he’d opened up his laptop the first thing as he’d woken up to check on Zim. Every moment he realized he was there, here, back on Earth, was so surreal. He still hadn’t gotten over it. 

Now, he had to go to work. He’d check on Zim again as soon as he got there. For some reason, that made him get ready for work much, much slower. Apprehension crippled his movements. 

Zim busied about GIR the way a parent would when dressing their child for an important event. He’d opened the flat top of his head very carefully, frowning at the rusty hollowness, the sides of which GIR’s old, malfunctioning mainframes were kept. It had already been cleaned thoroughly by Zim, though there was still a lingering smell, like something perishable mixed with something machine-made. 

The tallest may have exiled Zim, but they had made GIR in front of his very eyes. He’d denied it, at first, ignoring everything that did not please him to cope with reality. But GIR was the one thing the tallest had done for him that he would not soon forget. 

Still, it was not a shame they were gone. 

Zim carefully aligned the cables he’d gathered from various sources, trailed thin along the floor and now disappearing over the edge of the opening in GIR’s head. As he secured the last one, he briefly lingered his hand with some non-admitted affection over the robot’s smooth metal cheek, and smiled briefly.

“There. Let us see what that does. I think you will be feeling better in no time, GIR.”

GIR mimicked Zim’s smile, and it lasted about as long before he stared out into space again.

Once back online, Zim’s computer hit him with a backlog of urgent messages and news.

“ALMIGHTY TALLEST ASSASSINATED BY DEFECTIVE FORMER INVADER ZIM. IRKEN EMPIRE TO BE-“

Zim hurriedly cut it short. His hands drew back from the console, trembling. 

“Computer,” he commanded shakenly. “Delete all messages from the empire.”

‘That’s a crime, you know,’ said the computer, as if it hadn’t just woken up from a fifteen-month-long sleep. 

“I don’t care,” Zim answered casually. His lip pulled up from his teeth in a scowl. “Don’t you think I’m pretty well past petty crimes against the empire?”

‘Alright, alright, yeesh. Messages erased,’ replied the computer, after a few moments. ‘Would you like to review your other messages?’

“Other messages?” Zim’s antennae perked up. From whom would he have received anything from? For a moment, excitement welled up inside him. His eyes went wide. 

Aim?

“Review them,” he demanded, his voice thready with hope. 

‘First message: Irk bi-monthly. Dated fourteen months ago. Line start-‘

Zim grumbled. “Delete those, too,” he snapped impatiently. 

‘Erased,’ it said, immediately. ‘New first message: Dib Membrane. Dated thirteen months ago. Proceed?’

“Proceed,” assented Zim curiously, touching his fingertips together in front of him. 

‘Line start: ‘Hey, Zim. It’s been a couple months. You doing okay? Make it to Irken space alright? Let me know if you need backup.’ Line end.’

Zim sighed. He was tempted to delete those, too, if they all began that way.

‘Proceed with second message?’

“Yes, yes,” hurried Zim, “make your way down the list.”

‘Second message from Dib Membrane dated ten months ago. Line start: ‘Hey again, Zim. I’m really starting to get worried. You should really contact me soon. I know you’re hard to get rid of, but I don’t think you’re that hard to get rid of. Ursula’s been asking about you, too. What should I tell her?’ Line end.’

Ursula. Zim fitted his fingers together. Oh, Ursula. The only human he could say he truly loved. Dib was fine now, sure, but Ursula had shown him kindness from the start. Had shown him things about himself he could never have expected a human to be capable of knowing, even through her studious research. He touched his chest with reverence, frowning deeply. He regretted causing her any concern with his absence. 

‘Third message from Dib Membrane dated nine months ago. Line start…’

Zim stopped listening. His hand had gone down from his chest to his stomach. There was a rolling discomfort there, coming on so strong that it made him dizzy. Zim blinked slowly, his vision going blurry, pressing down on his belly to feel the slight curve he’d perhaps willfully ignored like everything else that bothered him. He refused to acknowledge it now. 

The wave of disorientation, with the continuous line of messages droning on in his poor hearing, had him sway. As he blinked rapidly to banish the blurriness, he lost all balance, dropping down hard onto his knees. It was bad enough that he didn’t quite feel the drop- only the flop of the inside of his stomach. Zim’s eyes wrenched open wide, and he was helpless to the effect of his own rebelling body, as he lurched to one side and retched. 

On his desktop, Dib sat back and recoiled as he watched Zim’s knees buckle, then the alien throwing up. Hard. The tension in his body was very clear even in the low resolution, and his antennae actually bunched up behind his head, kinking in discomfort as he heaved. Dib wasn’t even aware that they could do that. 

GIR was sitting propped up against the sleepy black-light glow of the huge computer monitor, and his eyes actually opened into full, barely glowing circles as he heard the tense cough and belch of his master vomiting. 

“M-master? You doin’ a tummy… uh…”

GIR’s voice was disturbingly slow. Like someone had recorded him and dialed it down a few steps. Dib’s forehead scrunched up in alarm. Everything about the scene was wrong.  
Zim kept heaving, his antennae re-bunching like an accordion each time. The computer had stopped relaying the messages mid-sentence. 

‘Woah… uh, master? You alright there?’

Zim could not respond, in the middle of a heave. The vomit was, oddly, white, and watery. It landed on the floor of the lab with a sickly squelch. Zim was clutching his stomach with both hands, his face wound up tightly around itself. 

When he finally got a breath, Zim’s eyes were still closed as he slowly lifted his torso up, his face suddenly aged several years- as if he’d aged as quickly as humans do. The green of his hue had changed to a pale, gray-yellow. For several minutes, he sat there silently, every muscle tense, unmoving except for the small twitch of his right antennae, his mouth drawn into a straight line. 

When he finally opened his eyes, he blinked a few times, holding his stomach, and carefully rose to his feet. Not without shaking, though. Dib still frowned in pity. It was clear he still wasn’t feeling well.

“Computer, clean that up,” he said at last, and it was so odd to hear Zim speaking normally. Not quickly, desperately, shouting and screeching. Demanding attention. Even when he was alone, he wasn’t quiet. Dib guessed sickness could do that to you. Zim swayed on his feet before making his way to the console chair, then staying there, staring ahead just like GIR. Still holding his belly. His color didn’t go back to normal. 

“Computer,” he said quietly, while metal arms reached down out from somewhere in the labyrinthian stacks of technology in walls of the lab, cleaning up the mess. “Do you have any good news?”

The computer seemed to hesitate, which made it seem that much more human to Dib. 

‘Not so far, master,’ it responded, and it was the closest thing to pity he would ever hear from a machine. 

“Talk to me again when you have good news,” he sneered. Then stared ahead again, the malice fading from his face. “I am… so very tired.”

Disturbed, Dib clicked away from the feed. 

He was stuck sitting on his hands, so to speak. He could not contact Zim as to arouse suspicion. Nor go to his house. But Zim was clearly ill, and it hurt to see the both of them so downtrodden. 

For several moments, everything felt a little hopeless. A minute more, still thinking of what could possibly be done and coming up with dead ends. 

His options now were to watch Zim get sicker, if that was what this was. For him to wait until it got bad enough that he had to seek out help. Dib leaned back into his desk chair, feeling more than a little helpless. 

Night on earth comforted Zim. It was the closest to feeling as if he was simply on a very large spaceship, floating through the nether. Not tied to anything. The dawn would come and trap him again, reminding him of his place. 

He went out of the house once, undisguised, crossing the dark lawn to look at the stars. Aim, if he so chose, would be able to see him there if he looked. If he pushed back the night sky, in his thoughts, he could see him there in his ship, legs up on the dashboard, idly cleaning his gun. Then looking over to Zim with love in his eyes.  
Zim stood there for long, hoping few moments before dragging himself back inside. 

GIR had regained some energy, and though he was tethered to the wires that steadily fed him energy from the base, he had gotten back up to walking around in short bursts of energy before Zim let him sit down in the command chair beside him. He had a lot of commentating to catch up on. 

“…and then I fleeeeew over da moon! Dat’s my moon! Master gave it to me!”

“That moon belonged to planet Hunith, GIR.” He was slowly going through maintenance diagnostics without much care or attention, halfway listening to GIR and his stories of what they’d just gone through. “But you can still have it.”

“I really like how you’s did the flyin’. I like how gettin’ friendly wi’ dat other young man.” GIR looked over to him with wide, innocent eyes, glowing just a little more now that he was hooked up to an energy source. “When we gonna see that boy again?”

Zim turned away from GIR. One would think that mentioning the name of his lover would be the thing to do it. But GIR’s acknowledgement of Aim was surprisingly disheartening.  
“Maybe someday,” he answered slowly. “When the war is over.”

“Like in them movies?”

“Yes, GIR. Like those human films you like so much.” Zim’s hands drifted down from the computer keys, and into his lap. “Why don’t I download one tonight?” Blinking away tears, he clasped his hands and sighed. 

“I think we both deserve it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More story is gonna happen soon I promise!! The first few chapters are a little slow, but it'll start picking up soon. Thanks for reading!!!


	3. We Know You're There (Zim.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another short interlude- before things really pick up for Zim and GIR. And maybe even Dib, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short one! It might seem rushed, and I may come back to edit it later, but I really want to start getting to the good parts of the story. It might seem impatient, but I'm really excited to start getting to those important parts. Enjoy!

***

Lard Nar was ordinarily never happy. There was a constant jitteriness to him, a nervousness that never left, tensing up his shoulders all the way to his horns. He’d click his claws against the arm rests of his chair and bite his lip when he wasn’t saying anything. Every mission was terrifying, every task monumentally important. Do or die. 

Today, he wore the brightest smile Zim had ever seen. As he and Aim emerged from the stolen ship behind them, the Vortian threw his arms around Zim, shaking with unadulterated joy. 

“I-I can’t believe you’ve actually done it! You crazy killer, you! All my brothers… all of them, free.” 

Zim could only hold his arms out in awkward surprise, staring ahead as the commander holding him so tightly burst into tears, his entire body quivering with an exhale of a sob.  
Aim eventually, with good humor, coaxed Lard Nar off of Zim, and the commander sheepishly pushed back his goggles onto the base of his horns, unveiling his small yellow eyes, streaming with gray tears. Behind them from the view of the window, Vort was already beginning to look a little brighter, shedding the shell of Irken influence, the mechanized sheets of metal floating in its atmosphere tearing slowly away from around the planet. 

“I don’t know how to thank either of you,” he said honestly. “I have nothing to say.” He stood there, taking off the goggles completely, and worrying them in his claws, his chest heaving as more relieved tears came. Zim stared, wide-eyed, completely unsure as to how to respond in this situation. 

“You don’t need to say anything,” assured Aim behind him, in his soft, sweet voice. “What’s done is done. I am glad we were the ones you sent to do it.”

Vort was liberated. And Zim only had a little more blood on his hands, so to speak. Of course he had a wonderful time shouting self-praises at the rest of the Resisty’s rag-tag bunch of aliens, once he’d gotten over the initial shock. Though, once they began to agree with him, he quieted down. Still smiling sheepishly, though, once they raised him up in a cheer. 

“You smelly fools are forgetting Aim!” He cried. “I was not the only one to-“

And he looked across the crowd to the assassin, who was looking at him with an expression Zim almost couldn’t place over the high strains of emotions running through his blood and throbbing in the inner ears beneath his skin. But he could almost recognize it, if he tried. It stopped him dead in his tracks, and he found himself unable to move as they set him down. For that expression of admiration, of peace. Relief, and love, expressed towards him. Him! Who, just months ago, had considered himself unlovable. 

It was all too much. In the middle of the crowd, still being praised, small cautious touches on the sides of his arms and shoulders, he hiccupped, and felt tears slide down his face to the floor. 

Someone, distantly, in his faulty hearing, shouted angrily, and the praises died down. Zim was left staring ahead at Aim, whose face had changed. No! It was sad now, downtrodden and concerned, with a hand raised outstretched as though to touch him and absorb his tears. 

Zim staggered forward, his vision blurred. “You!” He cried. “Put that face back on! The one where you- you looked so happy.” The assassins met, touching hands, and Zim bumped his forehead up into Aim, standing on his toes to do so. They fitted their fingers together and hummed- that cooing hum that Zim had become familiar so often with him. Aim’s voice was low and cool, breathing on all the cracks in his soul and healing them up. 

“I love you, Zim,” he said, adopting the Earth term that Zim had been so infatuated with before, and sending arrows of joy into his chest. 

“We did it,” said Zim, hoarse through his tears, and Aim parted his head from Zim’s only to wipe away some of them, and that expression was back. It was so warm, so perfect. Zim never wanted to see anything else again. 

Then, a lurching tremor rocked the ship, coming from one side, sending many of them to their feet. It lasted a moment too long, as if something had hit the ship, then grabbed hold and shook it a second more before letting go. Zim was shaken to the ground, falling forward on his hands, and Aim helped him stand again. Several of the crew were clearly shaken, having been so rudely jostled from their glad moods, and there were still others finding their feet.

“Is anyone hurt!” Cried Lard Nar, and thankfully, no one answered. Several navigators were already rushing to their console interfaces, looking anxiously down at the screens. The mood in the room had grown icy cold.

“Commander!” Rose an eager voice. “It’s- It’s an Irken ship! A small one, heavily outfitted with blasters!”  
“No- two Irken ships!” Cried another, full of anxiety. “One of them is trying to hail us!”

Lard Nar fitted the goggles back onto his face humorlessly and made his way up to the captain’s chair to belt out orders, all traces of happiness from his face completely gone.  
“Block the call, then brace yourselves all for warp five!” 

Zim wanted to scream. This was not how the moment was meant to go. He exchanged glances with Aim, whose face had gone back to terror again, and wanted to scream at him, too. That he had no control over the situation was enough to make him growl under his breath as he and Aim went to the side of the ship’s walls, holding onto the bar that was protocol for evasive maneuvers, and held on as the world went white. 

“Everyone alright?” Lard Nar's anxious voice, fitted with tense brackets around every syllable, parted through the whiteness. Zim looked down at his boots, sprawled in front of him, and didn't quite breathe out. 

Aim was holding on to him, arms wrapped around his waist. Zim shook the dizziness off, holding him back, realizing he must have somehow let go, and Aim caught him. 

“There’s a message!” 

While most of the Resisty were still recovering, slowly letting go or finding their balance again on the floor, one hardier communications officer was already at the console, his red eyes open wide against the glow of the screen. Lard Nar, his command chair slightly askew, righted it slowly in the silence and the steady hum of the ship around them, and turned to the officer impatiently. Except he was still too shocked by the warp to find the words. He stared unblinkingly, his teeth bared, while several others looked to the officer as well, waiting. 

Who looked directly at Zim, nothing around his eyes, completely wide and open and fearful. Zim locked onto it before he was too scared to look away. 

“It says- ‘We know you’re there, Zim.’”

***

Zim raised his head from the rim of the bucket, and blinked several times to dispel the dizziness. He looked down at his own vomit and grimaced, licking his lips and shuddering. 

“Computer!”

‘Yeah, I got it,’ replied the AI in it’s forever-nonchalant way. Mechanical arms dropped down from the ceiling.

Zim struggled to his feet and backed away from the bucket, as it was lifted away to be cleaned, disgusted every moment at the primitive solution he’d had to resort to, now that a week had passed. 

He couldn’t keep anything down. Even if he ate late at night, then forced himself to go to sleep, he’d wake every time very narrowly missing the floor when he needed to be sick. It had become unbearable and was endlessly frustrating that he was throwing up what little precious Irken rations that the Resisty had been able to provide for him, until more help eventually came. 

Though, he had already acknowledged help wasn’t coming. Before he'd even touched down in the ship, he knew. That had been his last escapade, these past months. He could never return to space. 

The Irken rubbed on his stomach, tiny lights in his eyes that came from standing up too quickly. Eating again now was not an option. He could fast for a few days, and then maybe the food would start agreeing with him more. 

GIR, at the end of his tether, the wires in his emptied head like a leash tying him to the great console, approached his back. Zim could feel his presence, inching up innocently enough, but didn’t turn around. The strength it had taken to expel the vomit was all but gone.

“Your tummy doin’ a frighten again Master?”

“Yes, GIR. I’m afraid I don’t feel at all well,” he admitted. “I’m even tempted to give you what’s left of my rations. Nothing I have is at all appetizing at the moment.”

“Oh,” said GIR. He shifted awkwardly on his metal legs, sensing the gravity of the situation. “You wanna… uh…”

Zim turned to him and smiled tightly. “It’s alright, GIR. I just need to get better. Then I can-“ he looked around, elapsing unsteadily into an uncertain pause. There really wasn’t much to do. He’d gotten the base fully back online, but with no desire for conquest, no mission to be had, he was essentially there with nothing. No purpose. Nothing to conquer, or adversely, save. “-whatever it is I do anymore.”

Watching Zim throw up was getting pretty old pretty fast. Dib had stopped feeling sick second-hand from watching him, less piteous and worried, and more irritated and exasperated that Zim wasn’t doing anything or seeking out help. 

He threw up everything he ate, to the point that Dib wasn’t certain if the alien was getting any proper nutrition at all. It couldn’t last. Zim had to come to his senses and visit them, eventually. He had to have some sense of self preservation. 

Dib had noticed something, besides that. Zim had stopped referring to himself in the third person. It was a small detail, but one that affected the alien’s syntax drastically. Without it, without the small inclusions of self-assurance in every other sentence the bug uttered, his entire use of language seemed so much smaller. Crippled with uncertainty. 

He watched as Zim lifted GIR up like an infant again, holding his back under the wires flowing from the little SIR’s heavy head, and the robot hugged him right back. 

“Let’s watch another movie,” came Zim’s voice from the low-fidelity sound feed. The rest of the base, as recorded by the bugs Dib had placed throughout, was an odd kind of white noise that had almost become like home, all those instances of watching Zim. “There’s not too much else to do. I don’t feel like walking around the stinky surface.”

“Yeah,” said GIR, slightly muffled by Zim’s shoulder. “Stinky,” he agreed. 

Dib’s heart lurched, something inside his chest falling down, as he heard knocking on his office door. Panicked, he clicked off the feed and muted the already low sound.

“Come in,” he said, turning, and the door opened up to Ursula, who smiled at him in her sweet, shining way. 

“Hey, Dibrach,” she teased. Dib groaned. Her reaction to finding out what Dib’s full name was hadn’t been unlike Elaine’s reaction to hearing Kramer’s first name in Seinfeld. Every so often she’d pull it out, just to playfully spite him. 

“Ursula-“

“Okay, Dib. I’m sorry,” she said earnestly, and finished entering the office, shutting the door behind her. “I wanted to let you know we decided to deactivate the probe. We’re not finding anything.”

“That’s fine,” Dib replied easily. “I figured that one was a lost cause, anyway. Waste of money.”

Ursula nodded slowly, still looking rather regretful. Her gold earrings bobbed at the sides of her face. “Still, its disappointing. I hoped we’d make contact with Zim, even.”

“Zim?”

Okay, too casual. He was overcompensating to hide how he’d been watching him, eager though he was to reunite him with Ursula, who in response pushed a curled lock behind her ear. 

“It hasn’t been that long, has it?” She asked slowly. “I know you two still butt heads, but… I think about him a lot.”

Dib sighed. “Yeah, me too,” he admitted. “I still can’t get over how he left.”

It was hard to remember back to a week ago when he’d felt that way, and hadn’t been worrying himself hard over his return. To act like nothing was happening felt monumentally dishonest. He felt that guilt, that embarrassment, welling up inside him. That feeling of disgust for himself and his urges that he’d dealt with ever since he was a child. To have power over things. Only, he didn’t feel like he had much power at all. 

Ursula said nothing. She just looked just past Dib’s head, frowning into that spot on the wall. She really did care about him. He knew that there were some aspects of their relationship that Dib could never know about, because of their storied past.

Thinking to the latest vomit episode he’d witnessed through the camera, he wished Zim trusted him enough. After all these years, of course he still didn’t deserve it, as he hadn’t really apologized. But it had been a long time. 

Ursula left his office with much of the same tension he’d been feeling since Zim came back. He waited carefully for a few moments before swiveling in his chair, clicking on the tab that had the feed of the base. Zim had moved out of the view of the current camera, and he clicked a few times before he found the right one. 

Zim was curled up in his console chair, the only part of him visible from the view of the back being the antennae drooping off the side. From the wires drooping off the edge, it looked like he was holding GIR in his lap. 

As he saw what they were watching, he allowed himself a small smile. It was some old Disney movie, traditionally animated. The bright, jewel colors flashed across the huge screen like a sweeping grin, constant and turning and seeing everything happily. 

Over the soundtrack, though, he thought he heard something. Cautious, he plugged in the headphones he found crumpled up to one side of the desk, plugged them in, and turned up the volume directly in his ears. 

It was a steady, constant, but shifting few sets of mantras Zim’s voice was quietly, barely daring to hope- a murmur. 

“It’ll be okay. Everything’s fine. You’ll- you’ll get better. Maybe he’ll even come back some day. Someday…”

Dib felt tears prick under the flesh of his eyes.

“It’ll be okay. Everything will be okay, soon. You’re safe now. You will get better. You are okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I headcanon that Zim talks to himself a lot, so that's what that is all about. He's always trying to reassure himself, one way or another.  
> Be sure to review if you liked it!! Follow my tumblr for updates, if you like.  
> Thanks for reading! Have a great day!!


	4. Can I ask? (What's wrong?)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zim meets up with Ursula, and also with Dib- but only in a less ceremonious way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again folks!! It took me a little bit to be satisfied with this chapter, and I don't think I'm satisfied with it, still. Like I said before, I'm probably gonna get to at least ten chapters and then re-edit the whole thing. I think that would be a good way to do it. Reunions are hard to write! But, enjoy!!

***  
There was blood on Zim’s hands. 

It was not so unusual to him, anymore. There had been too many times he’d inadvertently caused one of his Irken siblings their life. Of course this had to be the time it was intentional. The lives for whom he’d struggled for approval, acting up and out in every way, corrupted by their judgement, and of the ways of his planet that had ostracized him. 

But this was not an appropriate moment for introspection. He looked down at his gloves. The pink blood was transparent on them, enough that you would just think his gloves were just wet, from a distance. Just in his field of vision, beyond, where he purposefully made him a blur- was Almighty Tallest Purple. Strewn on the floor as if he’d never held as much power as he had. Just an object now. Not an individual. Not a monarch. 

He didn’t remember which direction he’d flung his PAK. It was on the edge of the room somewhere, behind a piece of furniture. A jewel without any glow.  
Every inch of him was shaking. It was over. It was done. 

The communicator embedded in the wrist on his gloves was pulsing steadily, reminding him of his partner. As he activated it, the screen smeared glowing pink as the material dragged across it. 

“Is it done?”

Zim nodded slowly before realizing they couldn’t see him. “It is done,” he replied lowly. 

All while the body in front of him would never move again, never raise its head, never laugh behind his back again. What a concept that was. 

Someone was calling his name, shaking his gaze from the corpse, holding fast to his shoulders and trying to pull away. It was too soft spoken to have much effect. 

“Zim- come away from there. It’s over. It’s done.”

Zim blinked slowly, the glue on his feet slowly loosening as he was pulled insistently. “It is?”

“Yes. Let’s get out of here. We need to leave, before they find us.”

Zim would later admire to himself how calm Aim had been. How steady he’d kept his voice. All while Zim could think nothing else other than that- they were dead. He’d killed them both. 

He stopped dissociating abruptly in the passenger’s seat of the late Tallest’s personal ship, where Aim was talking to him, reassuring him, promising things he couldn’t possibly promise. He was being moved, being touched, as Aim had apparently left the ship on autopilot and was now gently cleaning his gloves with a towel. It smelled of sickly disinfectant, and Zim looked up to his lover, who slouched forward, frowning and biting his lips as he spoke. 

“It’s okay, Zim. You’re safe now. They can’t- I can’t believe you’ve actually done it. You were wonderful, you know that? When we get back to the Resisty, we can rest. I promise.”  
He seemed to notice Zim’s eyes regain their light. 

“Can you hear me, my love?”

“Yes,” he choked, after a few moments. 

“Alright, good. I’m glad.” His face broke open into a cautious, watery smile. He’d been crying. Zim wanted to growl and cry, himself. Aim was the last one who needed to cry. He’d done nothing but be an exemplary Irken, in all ways. Not just an Irken, but an individual. 

Wary of frightening him again, the taller Irken leaned forward and brushed his forehead against Zim’s. Aim’s antennae gradually went to touch his, carefully easing forward to graze against the quivering stalk.

“You don’t know how many of our kind you’ve just saved,” he told him, awe in every word. “How many Irkens you’ve freed. We need never suffer again. They’re gone. They’re gone.”

Yes. They were gone. It was almost too early to be reassured. To early to stop seeing blood. He hadn’t spared them any pain, and some part of him really wished he had. 

“Let’s… never speak of this again.”

***  
Zim guessed he’d fallen asleep at some point. On the monitor, there was the DVD menu, playing its limited snippet of movie soundtrack, over and over again. Numbly, he stared up at it, at the idle animations of the character gesturing to the menu options, until he found the motivation to move when he couldn’t stand it anymore.

At once, he was on guard that he might throw up, until he remembered that he hadn’t eaten anything since he’d last thrown up. He felt like a shadow, and it wouldn’t do to feel any smaller than he was already. He was even tempted to scour the earth for a meal that would ease his discomfort, but he knew better. Earth foods did not suit him well. He knew from experience- frowning at the memory of being sick for days after the waffle incident. 

GIR had also fallen asleep, his little wire-infested head resting on his chest. He adjusted the little robot in his arms, re-claiming his grip and holding him closer.  
“Do you think it might still be nighttime, GIR?”

The robot didn’t respond. Now a days, he slept pretty deeply. That there had been a movie on reassured him to that.

“Computer,” he said, just loud enough for the vocal interface. “Time and Weather report.”

‘It is 4 o’clock AM, in this zone. The temperature is 79 degrees Fahrenheit.’

He sat there for another few empty moments before carefully lifting himself from the chair, rolling around GIR so that he set him down, who didn’t wake up. His arms slid down where he set them in the chair. Zim slid off the chair and threw a look at the robot, who he would have ordinarily found peaceful in this way, but now saw with dismay that his power levels remained so low and unsustainable. 

He crawled upwards, to night on earth. No one was awake. If they were, they certainly weren’t watching the strange green house in the cul-de-sac. Dib would have been the one to do that, in years past. Zim almost wished they were fighting again, just to have a way to pass the time. 

Once more, he cast his gaze up to the black atmosphere. There were not nearly as many stars visible tonight; probably because of light pollution. But the cybernetic implants he’d been fitted with shortly after birth sought them out all the same. As if one of them was Aim, looking down and watching him. 

“Can you see me?” He cradled his elbows in the opposite hands, looking up until the edges of the world melted away. “I said I’d be here. You could look down for once. You promised me you would.”

With all that he didn’t trust, he trusted Aim. Even if he said he didn’t. One of these nights he’d come out and he’d be looking. Except there was no way to know if he ever was. For all Zim knew, he could be looking right now. And that was why he would keep standing there. 

Ursula was normally the first to arrive at the lab, even before Dib. There was really no reason other than that she liked to get an early start, and that she’d been entrusted with her own set of keys. 

There was always that strange, apprehensive feeling when she stepped into the completely empty lab before turning on the lights, when it was silent, and a little cold. Even in the summer, she brought a jacket or a sweater, though she usually took it off halfway through the day when there were more people working, inadvertently warming the lab with their own natural body heat. Even so, she was glad she’d finally convinced Dib to replace the cold white fluorescents to make the lab seem more welcoming. 

Though it was a place for ghosts, for cryptids, (and for, as of last year, only one alien) she’d always found it a surprisingly welcome place to work. Even as she crossed the more open lab, with the spirit cells suspended inside the glass tube, with the liquid comprised of all the chemicals she could not name unless she looked at the files. Dib could name them all, however. His memory was impeccable, especially when it came to the things he cared about. 

The largest lab had several switches to illuminate all the separate corners. Ursula would have to walk to each one to fill the vast room with light. This was the center of the new Membrane Labs, and while many would find it inconvenient to make the long walk against the walls to find each switch, and wonder why there wasn’t some switch to flip all the lights on at once, Ursula didn’t mind going to them all separately, as it had become part of her morning routine. 

With each light, there was a satisfying sound, like a clash up above, then a steady hum and electricity of white noise. Several of the light switches also activated some of the machines that had to be turned off during the night, and perhaps that was the reason why there were so many, all spread out. Turning them all on at once could possibly overload something, or short something out, very easily. 

Like she did every weekday, she made the trek around the circumference of the massive room, unveiling the paraphernalia that one typically used to study the paranormal. And to contain it. What specimens they had found were posthumous examples- Dib would never imprison something living. He’d insist upon studying it from a distance, if it was. But each new thing that was revealed gave the room a different feeling, a new color. She never expected, as a child, that being a scientist would be so… colorful. 

Ursula threw on the last light on a very small figure, sitting on one of the examination tables. It was hardly used except to set things on during the day. Her first, very brief inclination was to think that someone had left something there overnight. 

Then there was a pause in every thought she had. 

She made a beeline from the light switch to the table. Zim was lifting his head and blinking his eyes, hunched over GIR as he held him like a child’s toy. She didn’t have enough time to reel in disbelief. All she could do was see Zim, who was slowly uncurling from a slouch and blinking up at her, just starting to make his toothy grin appear. 

“Oh, my god,” she said, softly, as she walked, then sprinted, all until he was as close as could be in that long, long moment, and she took them both into her arms. It took every ounce of her strength to hold herself back from squeezing hard, and never letting go. “Oh my god!”

“I too, have missed you, Ursula-human,” he said in a hoarse whisper, into her hair. 

GIR was between them, an odd lump of cold metal, gently stirring, but not speaking. This moment- one she’d waited for ever since he’d left- was embroidered with doubts. When she pulled away from the embrace, she saw him, how watered down his entire bravado was, how small and wan. How dim GIR’s eyes were, now. 

But he was here. Dare she think of it as home, for him.

“Zim,” she said, pulling back and cautiously touching his shoulders, wondering if she’d offended him by touching him so suddenly. To reassure her, seeming to see her sudden hesitation, he set his gloved hands on her arms, grasping just a little with his dainty fingers. It was a motion that meant so much to her, because she knew these moments of intimacy he truly reserved only for herself and GIR. “I- I was starting to think you wouldn’t come back.”

“But I did, foolish human. You know that as well as you can see me,” he replied, admonishingly, but with a gentle edge.

She couldn’t help but keep touching him, keep smiling her watery smile at him, to let her know how happy she was that he was safe. Ursula couldn’t help herself, and put her hands on his head, running down the length of his antenna with her thumbs and watching as he relaxed. 

“What- oh, sweetheart, what happened to your eye?”

Zim grinned. The eyepatch, black as his boots and gloves and made of the same material, was a new one. She hadn’t wanted to ask so soon, but all she wanted to know was everything, right there and now. 

“Nothing!” He said proudly, though his voice crackled. He took the rounded bottom of the eyepatch and tilted it upward- revealing his true, pink, and starry eye. “I… couldn’t find my other contact.”

Despite herself, she laughed, and sent herself into tears. Ursula couldn’t control her giddiness, and she grabbed him tightly, embracing him as completely as she could, until she was lifting them both a little off the table. After a few moments, Zim lifted his hand and placed it on her shoulder, sighing. 

Zim hadn’t said anything about his nausea, yet. He couldn’t refuse her cup of tea. She’d kindly sterilized the water, even as it was already going to be boiled, and the tea was warm and welcoming. He drank it slowly, taking small sips, and tried to keep his head still so he wouldn’t get dizzy and vomit it all back up. That would be a very rude way to say hello to someone again after it had been even longer for them than it had been for him. Only, it didn’t seem that way.

He knew what she expected. What she truly wanted, and he didn’t know how to give it to her. There was nothing he wanted less than to talk about it. It was a brief moment of selfishness that he was used to having with any other creature but her. Zim didn’t want to talk about the Resisty. He didn’t want to talk about the rebellion, and how he’d been dragged into it only through a sympathy that had to be learned, then rapidly embraced. He didn’t want to talk about Aim, how they’d met, fallen in love, and how he would likely never see him again. He missed him so much. 

And Zim didn’t want to talk about his Tallest- and what his people were calling him now. The Tallest-Killer. Four of them, now. He was an imperial murderer.  
Of course she noticed his hesitation. 

“Are you… are you not ready to talk about it?”

He was looking at GIR, propped up with his eyes closed in the chair beside him. Zim turned back to Ursula and let his antennae fall back.

“No,” he said bluntly. “It will be a while before I will be, if I ever am, dear Ursula, so do not expect anything.” Then seeing her expression, he softened. “Please.”

“I would never,” she said gingerly, reaching out her hand halfway, but not touching him. He wanted to tell her that it was okay, and pull her hand to him and let her pet away his aches with her warm, gentle hands. He looked at her, his eyes completely open, hoping to express that sentiment through them. He was too proud to ask for it. “I could never demand anything from you. You’re my friend. I’ve just been… so worried. I missed you so much.”

Once more, he was too proud to say he’d missed her too. But he wanted to. Because he had- almost every day during the war that was still going on, miles and miles above them.  
He wished that the gloves would better let his hands absorb the heat from the tea mug. It felt so heavy in his grasp. He waited for her to speak again, setting it in his lap. 

“Are you okay?”

Zim’s antennae perked up a few inches before lowering again, staring at her as she waited for his response. He knew that was what she was waiting for, and he had to satisfy her.  
“Yes,” he said simply. Because he wasn’t dying, as far as he knew. 

“Can I ask why GIR is so sleepy?”

The soldiers, other elites who had once been his brothers, ones he trained and slept and fought with, ripping GIR from his grasp-

Holding that electrified device, sparking, biting-the-air with crackling sound, at the little robot’s open chest-

‘Master, I’s scared.’

“No. Not yet,” he said hoarsely, and lifted the mug up again for another sip as if it was the heaviest thing in the world. 

Dib entered the halls through the back entrance, as he normally did, without any particular inkling as to what would happen that day. He hadn’t checked the base feed that morning, saving it for when he actually got to work, and stepped in with his briefcase without much of an eager stride. Lately it had been hard to walk with any sort of confidence.  
It took him several moments of walking past the rectangular glass window before he dashed back to take a very belated double-take. 

Ursula had her back facing to him, and her curly head was bent over Zim, whose hand she held, stroking over the back of it with her thumb. Before he even could feel any disbelief, he cursed that he could not hear what she was saying. 

Then he remembered he could be seen, and he wasn’t hiding behind a camera at the moment, and ducked away from the window. Zim hadn’t seemed to have seen him, and he breathed out a sigh. 

It was only after that moment that he realized how strange it was to see him again, not behind a camera. Dib realized he was real. They’d fought when he was a child. This was ZIM.

He needed to sit down. 

Waiting for Ursula to come by and bring him the good news in his office felt better. He almost felt as if he hadn’t been watching him. That he was at least a little honest. 

When she finally did, after what seemed like days (which in reality was only thirty minutes) she came and gestured, smiling her beautiful smile, with the sunbeams shining out of it.

“Come here for a minute,” she said, unknowingly. “I have something to show you.”

When she pulled him into that room where Zim was sitting, back straight, hands clasped and sitting between his legs. 

Despite himself, how worried he already was, he broke out into a grin. 

“Hey, bug man,” he chuffed out. It was hard to keep standing at a distance. He wanted to go to Zim, and throw his arms around him, and tell him to never leave so long again. It was odd that he felt he really could. But he didn’t want to antagonize Zim again, and he wasn’t sure how Zim would react to being hugged. Or even if Dib came forward any closer than a few feet. “I knew you’d come back. The place hasn’t been the same without-“

“Yes, yes, thank you,” said Zim, waving his hand dismissively. His voice was just the same as it had always been, just if you were to turn the volume knob down a little. “I know that.”

But then he held out his hand. It took Dib a moment, as this was something that he never expected from the loud, obnoxious, self-absorbed space monster he’d known half his life. 

He wanted to shake his hand.

Stupefied, Dib could do nothing but take the hand, grasping the dainty fingers with his thumb and forefinger. At one time, they were of equal size- perhaps at the same time that they had been equally matched. 

“How have you been? Did you get everything you needed?”

Zim blinked at him as their hands parted. “I suppose so.” 

“Well, I hope, considering how long it took.” He looked at Ursula, who was smiling a small smile. He mirrored it, sheepishly. “Could you leave us alone for a second?”

Her smile disappeared. “Oh. Sure.” Then she promptly left. When Dib turned back to the Irken, he was looking at the door. His eyes looked dull, the color dimmed and watered down. Dib pulled in a breath. 

“You really worried her, you know.”

Zim’s face twisted into a scowl. “Don’t you think I know that, stinky? Why did you ask her to leave?”

“Because I wanted to catch up with you,” he said earnestly. “Are you doing okay? You’re looking… peaky.” 

It was difficult to ask these things when Dib already knew what was wrong. 

“I have not peaked,” Zim said, spitting the word, “insolent fool-boy. We could have caught up just as well with Ursula in the room.”

Dib spotted GIR, sitting on a chair against the wall. His eyes were closed. Without the filter of the camera, he could see the robot’s metal casings had been scuffed and scorched in places. It made it more difficult to hear Zim’s snapping without GIR’s innocent, excitable commentary.

“What’s wrong with GIR?” He had to ask, because he actually didn’t know.

“Do NOT touch him, Dib-worm. You’ll only break him further.” 

Dib almost threw up his hands, but he didn’t want to antagonize Zim any more than the alien clearly felt. He’d only seen Zim again for a minute or so, and they were already arguing. 

“GIR’s broken?” Even when he’d seen the way he’d acted already, it hurt to hear those words. Zim glared at him, lowering his eyes, baring his teeth and quivering with anger. His antennae were flat against his head. 

“Hey, relax, okay?” Dib put his hands up to try and disarm him. “I just want to help. You came because you wanted to see us, right? You need help?”

“I came here to see Ursula, pig-smelly. Not you. I only saw you because she wanted me to. That is all.”

It hadn’t even been five minutes. Dib was going to lose his temper. 

“Ugh.” This time he did step back, throwing up his arms. “You know- why do I even bother?”

“I could ask myself the same!”

“I’m being nice, okay? What’s it going to take to get you to trust me?”

“Nothing. An invader- I trust no one!” His eyes were half shut with the weight of his brow, and he was baring his teeth again. Dib sighed angrily.

“Come on, can we just agree to make a truce for once? I’m not fighting to expose you anymore. I want nothing more than to protect you, okay? Now that you’re not trying to take anything over, you’re a pretty important citizen here.” He ran his hands over his stubble, embarrassed that he’d forgotten to shave, and didn’t look at Zim as he spoke again. “I really do just want to help. You can use one of your weird Irken mind reading devices or whatever if you want, if you’re really so scared that I’m going to betray you.”

As soon as he said that, he regretted it. That would not be good; he’d find out Dib had been watching him.

When Dib actually looked at Zim, though, his face fell. Zim had both hands clasped over his mouth, and he was looking down wide-eyed at the floor. He clearly wasn’t thinking of the same. Every inch of him trembled.

“Woah, Zim?” He wanted to crouch down to Zim’s level to get his attention, but knew that would only demean him. “Are you going to throw up?”

Zim nodded at once, shutting his eyes tight. Dib made a dash for the small trash can in the corner of the room, and shoved it in the Irken’s direction just in time for him to latch onto it and become violently sick. 

Again Dib was aware of how being behind the camera dampened the severity of the colors, noises, and details of everything he’d been witnessing. The retching sounds Zim was making were /awful./ It was like he was coughing up and choking around something solid. Like hearing him screech around water. Watching the antennae kink up, too, made him cringe.

Without thinking, he came forward and rested his hand on Zim’s PAK. Without looking up, and before heaving a third time, Zim swatted his hand away.  
Dib held up his hands again, and stepped back. Zim made a pause, his face hidden by the rim of the trash can, but his shoulders were still trembling. He reclaimed his grip around the edge and dry-heaved. 

“I’m gonna go get Ursula,” he assured him. Because certainly this could not go on. He needed to be examined, and Dib was not to be trusted. He wasn’t sure if he could trust himself. Zim made a slight turn of his head in Dib’s direction before heaving again, and Dib fled the little examination room to find her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WhY Do I ToRtUrE HIM??????  
> But seriously, it might not seem like it, but there's going to be a lot of happy moments in this fic, I promise.  
> Thanks for tuning in!! Have a good one!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ursula follows Zim to his base.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again everyone!! Happy new year! Like I said, I still need to do my sweep of edits, but for now things are really kicking into high gear and I'm hoping to start posting a chapter a week, or at least every other week. Enjoy! It's gonna get rough soon! Or.... rougher. Then softer. Because I'm a big softy.

***  
Tallest Red was no lightweight. Zim remembered that from the academy. 

It troubled him that he could not remember his name. He’d had one, once. Tallest Red had had a very different name, when they were smeets. 

Zim dodged the shot with the agility that came from being made of lighter, lither stuff than what’s-his-name was. He knew from hear-say that their PAK legs had been removed upon their ascension, years ago, but all the blasters and alterations they cared to make to their PAK’s contents remained, though rarely used. The nozzle flared with white steam, hovering over one shoulder on an arm that made Red look as if he were using a child’s toy. 

One of his gauntlets had been knocked off, the severed shell lying somewhere in the crevices that all the wires embedded in the floor made. Revealed was the jagged scar tissue, pale green, where they’d removed his thumb. Part of the bone stuck out from the wiry hand, paler than the rest of his body. And the leader was seething, worse than Zim had ever cared to notice of him. He would have expected this from Purple- not Red. He guessed when it came to affairs such as this, where everything that was their privilege was so close to being revoked- he was desperate to keep it. All those things which he’d earned just by having grown a little more than Zim. 

Well, a lot more. 

“What was your name, before all of this?” Taunted Zim, whose face he knew must have been very similar to the one glaring over him, looming just as tall as he was afraid. Though, his voice didn’t falter. “Do you remember? You forgot everything. Every one of us, when you grew up.”

He’d thought of human familial dynamics when it came to the way he’d altered his thoughts as they all grew. He treated them like his fathers. When really, if he hadn’t been born so early, so soon before all the rest of them, they could have been brothers. They already were, and still could have been.

“I’ve given you every chance, Zim,” he said, spitting out the name. “If all the shocks and the serums haven’t taught you to be loyal enough, well then, I’ll have to cut you down.”  
Zim stood so that they met eyes. The hydraulic slide of his legs carrying him up to his greatest height behind him gave him something. Some pride. But he knew that was not where he should carry his pride, anymore. 

“Everything has cut me down!” He lurched forward, moving only one leg as he propelled himself through the air and made the tips of his claws into a knife. “Everything! You drove me to it!”

Red dodged, his shoulders heaving as he whirled around to face Zim again. “I did, Zim? Who was the one who sent you to Earth? You know what Purple wanted to do? I shouldn’t have to say it.”

Zim lunged back, in the same direction he’d come from, and Red didn’t dodge as quickly this time. Zim’s fingers hit across the ruler’s cheek, cutting him. Red grunted loudly, cursing, and turned to Zim again, whose fingers had opened, staring with a chin turned downward and eyes full of murder. 

“Wait, Zim,” sighed Red. “Peace, for a moment.”

“You-“

“Peace!” Shouted Red. “Just give me one Irk-damned second.”

Then, while keeping a hand held up, he reached up on one side, his index finger finding some trigger that Zim could not see, and Zim jumped in his skin as the heavy chest piece severed front to back and clattered to the floor. Red did the same with the hard shell of the skirt, and the two pieces dropped and fell forward as they left Red’s levitation field. All while the leader remained floating, his three-ringed corset remaining, separating the two pieces of black underclothing that was next to the skin. Zim could tell from where he was standing that it was made of a finer material than his leggings. It was sleeveless, but also covered his feet. 

Red was so long, so gaunt. The armor had made him look more substantial, but now that the heavy outerwear was removed, he looked so much more fragile.   
That was perhaps why he wore it. Zim had never considered it. Other than their status, it protected their bodies that were so finely boned, now that they had grown so drastically. He wasn’t as well protected, but he was lighter now. Aim was sort of like that- but why, in this moment, in his mind, did Red fall so much more vulnerable to him?

Zim grinned. What a careless mistake. 

He flew the same time as Red hovered in his direction, throwing one another to the point where they’d collide. 

When he stood over Red’s body, the shard of metal he’d planted there sticking out from between his shoulder blades where his PAK had rested, Zim gave a shudder and dropped to his knees. 

“I remember… now. Your name was Skan.”

On some level, he could see why Aim had been in love with him, all that time ago.

But all that was sort of gone now. 

***

“What do you mean, ‘he must’ve run off?!’” Ursula glared at Dib in a way that scarred him deeply. She was almost never angry, and the disappointment she was displaying now made him want to go run and hide. 

“I- I don’t know. I’m sorry, Ursula. I ran to come find you- he was just there.”

“I /know/ he was just here, Dib!” She spat his name just like Zim did. That hurt too. “What did you say to him?”

“Nothing! I just wanted to know what was wrong with GIR. He got defensive.”

Ursula maintained her glare. “You should have let me stay in the room. I’ve earned his trust. You haven’t.” She yanked her jacket from the desk behind her, and pushed past him from her office. “I’m going to find him.”

As the door started to fall shut, Dib stood stupefied for a moment before his face twisted, and he tore the door back open to shout after. 

“He’s not some sweet kid like you think he is, you know! He’d a mind-raping, blood-sucking alien! You haven’t even seen half the stuff he’s done! Wait until he starts showing you who he really is!”

But Ursula didn’t turn around. 

She remembered where the house was, even when it took her a minute. She’d never actually been there, but her memory was good enough that she could picture the name of the town and the street where it was held. 

Something of Dib’s words echoed back to her as the shadow of it fell over her car. It had to be his house. There was no house that echoed of his alien strangeness like this one did. 

Ursula beheld it for a while. She was ready to burst out of the car to dash inside before she actually saw the house. 

Dib was probably right. She’d heard tell of their misadventures. 

But Zim had grown up, right? Hadn’t he been a kid, too, back then? He might as well have been, since Dib blamed himself as much as Zim did; besides the fact that he had probably saved the Earth countless times at the same instances Zim had bungled to enslave it. That was what she got from the way Dib described it, when he’d been little, and ruthless. Like Zim. He’d grown out of that now- Zim never would. Unless that was what was happening now. 

She was having second thoughts. Zim didn’t need to be coddled like a human child. He’d been a great threat once, and he could be, again. Just as easily. 

That was until she saw Zim walking down the sidewalk.

Oh, god, he did look so vulnerable. It was hard not to have any sort of sympathy. He didn’t notice her car parked so closely to the entrance, and continued forward without looking up. Ursula ducked down but kept up just enough that she could see him plodding with small, uncomfortable steps toward the great, strange house. Her heart clenched with worry. His skin was such a sickly color, a yellow-gray, and his shoulders hunched down around where he was holding GIR, the little robot’s head tucked under his chin. 

GIR was undisguised, but she supposed, when he wasn’t moving and talking, he looked like a child’s toy. No need to hide- and perhaps there wasn’t any motivation of that kind. From what she could tell of his expressive face from the angle of his face with the eyepatch on it, Zim’s expression was blank.

She hadn’t given any thought to the fact that he wouldn’t be home yet. It was a short walk to the lab, and you could even see it in the distance, but Zim was walking as if he couldn’t bear to move any quicker. Ursula watched him as he stepped to the front door, and pushed it open, disappearing into the dark inside. Only then did she straighten up, no longer afraid of being noticed. 

Stifled with the decision she had to make, she sat there for another long while, looking up into the narrow house to see if she could see anything through the upper window. As if the shutters would open and he’d glare down onto her car like a ghost. 

She had to go after him. Even if she wasn’t supposed to care about him, she did, and besides that, he was a valuable member of this society. Dib had said so himself. 

Ursula didn’t think about the pathway up, but arrived through the doorway without many expectations. Only that she wanted to know what was wrong. 

At once, scaring her nearly to death, the two lanky, squeaking androids came forward and bent over her with their accordion waists and their lifeless eyes. 

“WELCOME HOME, SON!”

She only lifted her arms from her head when it had been a moment or so after they’d slid back on the track into their respective corners, staring unblinking in the dim living room. Ursula shuddered. 

Another voice made her jump, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once, sighing impatiently before speaking. 

‘You’re an intruder, you know. If you step any further into this building I’ll have to forcibly eject you.’

She knew, after a moment’s thought, that it was the computer that was the heart of Zim’s base. When they’d first met to submit himself to research, he’d spoken about it briefly. For some reason, she’d expected it to sound like Zim, and not this mechanical baritone. But now that she thought of it, that would seem weird, wouldn’t it? And she didn’t expect it to be so… rude?

“You- oh. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let myself in like that. But I’m looking for Zim. If you want, you can tell him I’m here. We know each other.”

There was a small moment of silence. ‘Wait a minute. You’re Ursula, right?’

“That’s me,” she replied, taken aback. “Does Zim talk about me?”

‘Only, like, all the time.’ It didn’t elaborate.

“Oh,” she said, after waiting in vain for a follow-up on that statement. “All good things, I hope?”

‘Uh, yeah. I guess.’

This AI was wildly unhelpful. 

“So, can I come in now?”

‘Sure.’

“How do I get to Zim?”

A short distance away, the trash can in the open layout of the living room squeaked open its lid. Ursula sighed. Only Zim…

She approached the trash can and peered inside to see a long glass tunnel, funneling downward into darkness. The entrance was narrow, but she could fit in it well enough if she squeezed. 

The base was /huge./

Why on earth did such a small alien need such a large dwelling? There was way too much of it for it to be any kind of logical. She guessed his home planet had quite an abundance of resources for just one of their invaders to have a base outfitted with the space this one had. 

Ursula had to watch her step. Some pathways were narrow, and once her foot got caught in the wires directly beside the path she was walking on because she’d been looking up. It gave her a terrible scare, and she yelped in the silence. When she thought that no one heard her, she dropped her hands from her mouth and continued on. 

Everything was almost perfectly human sized- but for a few details. Several of the various keyboards, consoles, and interfaces that powered the nameless machines and appliances she passed along the way hardly came up to her hip. Sometimes there were obvious arrangements, if something were higher up, that Zim could climb to reach. If you looked closely, there were small pieces of evidence that this place was Zim’s. And it was impeccably neat and clean.

All except for one spot. 

The largest monitor had a desk chair that was human-sized, and the screen seemed to span the height of a full story of a building. It was a wall of blankness at the moment, with nothing on it. There was a dark light to the cast of the screen, as if it was sleeping. 

There were blankets haphazardly strewn on the chair, of various colors and materials and sizes. It was terribly out of place compared to the rest of the labyrinth. 

When she’d been staring for a moment, thinking that Zim must surely be nearby, a grouping of wires that was tight against the edge of the console desk began to go slack. Whatever was attached to it, on the other side of the wall, was moving in her direction. 

She froze, thinking this had to be some strange beast Zim was keeping captive, but instead of that, it was GIR. His miniscule presence there was so quiet and unassuming compared to what she was used to. Like a child who woke up in the middle of the night to tell their parent they’d had a nightmare. 

He edged around the corner, the wires flooding out of the top of his head, keeping him leashed close to the computer. When he saw Ursula, his eyes, glowing just a little brighter than they had before, sparked, and he broke out into a wide grin, and he shrieked her name. 

It was always a high honor for her that the little robot remembered her name. She had a theory that Zim had trained GIR to keep calling Dib ‘Mary’ just to spite him. He could be petty, like that. 

Her heart opened up. It was so good to see GIR awake, with or without the extra attachments. He toddled to her and she bent down to lift him up into her arms. 

“Das’ good, Ursula! I like you! You been good?”

“Yeah GIR, I’ve been good,” she responded, holding his head to her shoulder. She was careful not to lift him too far, and walked closer to the computer so that he wasn’t so far parted from the source of the wires. “Are you feeling better now?”

“I feeling okay,” he promised, hugging her back, and Ursula looked over his little shoulder, eyes wide with unshed tears. Something was making her so scared, to be here. A feeling that she’d be torn apart by the things that she couldn’t see from any one angle she spent too long with her back turned toward.

She spun around in a circle. When she faced the direction she’d started to turn in, a pair of pink eyes were staring at her from the nether. 

“Please mind the cords,” croaked Zim. 

Ursula looked down. The wires connected to GIR had formed a circle around her feet. “Oh,” she said numbly, and stepped out of it. She blinked several times, still trying to adjust to the low light. “Why didn’t you tell me you were nauseous?”

“I didn’t think it necessary.”

“I find it necessary to know when you’re not well,” she retorted. “When you agreed to let us study you, you agreed to that, also. I’m partially responsible for your well-being.”  
He sighed deeply. “Please go back to work, Ursula. My departure has not warranted-“

“You’re sick, Zim.”

As she focused further on the eyes, her eyes adjusted so they were no longer floating in the darkness. The spindly shape of legs, connecting Zim to where he hung, she could slowly make out. There was a guardedness about it, an insecurity which made the use of the legs necessary.

“I can look after myself.”

“But you don’t have to,” she said, still holding GIR close, even as he had begun to play with her hair, twirling a few curls around his sharp little fingers. “I don’t want you to.”  
Sighing, he drew himself out of the darkness. He hadn’t bothered to take off his disguise, and his stature made him very briefly resemble a child before she saw the subtle wrinkles around his eyes, and the undeniable age that was present in the way he held himself. The spider legs slid with a hydraulic hiss back between his shoulder blades.

“How would you help me?”

“I’m a scientist. I’ll find a way.”

Zim’s eye darted to the side. “I don’t know if I’m ready,” he said, touching his fingertips together in front of him. Then he looked up at her, and there was an unhinged quality to the new expression as his visible eye turned back. The false iris and pupil betrayed so much emotion that was further hidden behind them. “I don’t know why I’m still so scared.”

She softened, her shoulders relaxing, and all the mechanical sounds inside GIR hummed in her ears. “It’s alright to be scared. But we’ve been through a lot together. I’m sure whatever this is, we’ll go through it together, too.”

He didn’t shift. The longer he stood like that, the more it seemed like he was made of glass. “The war is over,” he said lowly, unblinking, like in a trance. “Why am I still so frightened?”

Zim lowered his head and pushed his hands back over it, trembling from his shoulders down. His hands pushed his hairpiece back until the base of his antennae were visible. “Forgive me, Ursula,” he murmured towards the floor. 

When he lifted his head, the wig fell. His antennae were released and allowed to spring outward and back. The hairpiece- and she wondered if that was the only one he’d ever had, the original one- lay there like a stiff, dead thing at his feet. 

“Master?”

GIR was looking at Zim, almost as if frightened of him. It took Ursula a moment to think that the fear was misdirected, and GIR should have been afraid for his master, and not of him. But he didn’t seem to know the difference. 

“I’m alright, GIR,” he answered, as if consoling a child. And perhaps he really was. His hands reached outward a little before falling. “I’m just acting childish.” He looked away again, and huffed a breath of air out of his mouth. 

Trauma isn’t childish, she wanted to say. Ursula was daunted by whatever he seemed to have suffered, and whatever mark it had left on him since he’d been away.  
“I have a suggestion,” she said without much thought. “How about you come and stay at my house tonight?”

Zim’s antennae perked up. “Your house?”

“Yeah.” She smiled. “I have a huge, comfortable couch. You can sleep on that instead of in your…” she gestured to the command center with her head, “weird alien chair.”  
Of course she was teasing. There was no real malice to the words. 

But Zim did seem to like the idea quite a bit. The pupil on the one contact had widened. 

“I think I would like to get out of this,” he looked up around him, gesturing with a roll of his fingers, “cave of mine. If you’ll have me.”

“I just said I would,” she said softly, and smiled again.

Zim looked at GIR, who had laid his head down and was humming an idle song. “However…”

“GIR can stay at the lab,” she offered. “I know Dib, with his-“

“Agh, Dib! How did I know it would come to that!” Zim snarled. He folded his arms pointedly. “He will not lay a finger on my…” 

Zim searched for a word. It took him a moment.

“Servant,” he decided. Though it was clear that wasn’t what he was originally going to say.

“Dib cares a lot about you,” she responded, disarmingly sweet. “I’m pretty sure you’ve had a larger presence in his life than his own father did. You motivated him to do some pretty fantastic things, if you think about it.”

It was clear that Dib had gotten his penchant for making the world better by fighting Zim in the first place. Protecting the planet from a malevolent, if somewhat bungling, alien invader, from a young age tended to motivate one in that direction. 

She couldn’t believe she was doing this, either. Oh, the absurdity of life. 

Zim bent forward at the waist to retrieve his wig, replacing it on his head. 

Dib swiveled in his chair, half-consciously rubbing his unshaved jaw with his hand. He turned from the monitor, towards the door, and pressed a button on a small black box near the computer. 

‘Yes, sir?’ Inquired a voice from within.

“Please prepare the mechanical repair and damage control bay so that it’s immediately user friendly. I’m going to work tonight on a new project.”

‘Yes, sir.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we have it!! Thanks for reading! I'm particularly excited about the next chapter. It has all of my favorite things in it. Stay tuned!

**Author's Note:**

> OoooOOOooooOOooooOooo mystery!!! Where has Zim been all this time???? Tune in next time to find out, same bat time same bat channel!!!!


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